


Steady And Sure

by Val_Creative



Category: His Dark Materials (TV), His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Injury, Canon - Book & TV Combination, Episode Related, F/M, Fluff, Hurt Will Parry, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, Protective Lyra Belacqua, Romantic Friendship, Season/Series 02, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:21:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28177566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Val_Creative/pseuds/Val_Creative
Summary: During the witches' spell for Will, Lyra feels helpless. There's nothing she can do when Will stops breathing.
Relationships: Lyra Belacqua/Will Parry
Comments: 12
Kudos: 61





	Steady And Sure

**Author's Note:**

> DON'T WORRY. THIS ENDS GOOD. I JUST LOVE WHUMP AND LYRAWILL. Please enjoy today's fic. Any thoughts/comments you had are deeply appreciated and tbh hearing from you motivates me to keep making more of these two. Thank you!❤️

*

She misses the stand-up bath.

Lyra sniffs the collar of bluish green jacket, wrinkling her nose. All of her feels too warm and sticky with sweat under Lyra's clothes. She misses living in her and Will's house in Cittàgazze's inner villa, drinking up the lemonade, learning how to play Will's card games and trying to not cheat with Pantalaimon, and escaping to the roof to admire the stars of another moonlit world.

It's not fair. None of this should be happening to her or to Will.

They move through another labyrinth of greyed rock towering even the crest of Serafina's head. Lyra jerks her head round at the sound of moaning. Will grimaces, teeth clenched and exposed, sliding down with his back against the valley-rock.

"Will," Lyra murmurs, crouching in front of him. Her hands grasp urgently onto Will's knee.

Beneath the scabs, Will's face seems a horrific pasty colour.

"Mm'fine…" he breathes, gently dismissing Lyra's apprehension. "Needed to sit… thss'all… we can keep moving…"

Lyra's eyes roam to Will's dirtied-red bandages. She squeezes her fingers rigidly on his knee, waiting for him to look up.

"Will, you don't have to pretend for me…"

Tears glint on his eyelashes. Will stiffens his mouth, but his entire body quivers against the rock and under Lyra's fingertips. He's so strong, Lyra tells herself passionately. Will is the strongest person she knows. _They can make it together—they can._

She scoots in until they lean on each other, Will's chin tucking her shoulder. His cheek weighs to hers.

Lyra's fingers nestle against the back of Will's neck, holding him. A small, whimpery noise lodges in her throat. Lyra hates how frightened she is, and how frightened she was before of Will never coming to after his sick-dreams.

She sat beside him every night. Laid down with him.

Lyra gazes up to Serafina beside them and observing in pity. The witch's features soften, her hand touching Lyra's brow.

"It is time."

*

Darkness surrounds them, with the flamelight piercing into Lyra's eyes. It silhouettes Will lying on his back.

He's gone quiet, Will's muscles aching and slackening. Serafina insists this is natural for the spell. Lyra wants to sit with him, to reassure Will that she's not leaving and clasp his hand, but she knows she shouldn't. The witches shouldn't be interrupted.

They raise their arms, yelling and chanting _oak bark! spider silk and ground moss! saltweed!_ over Will. Their naked heels lightly stomp the earth. One of the witches stirs a pot of boiling water over the flames, wearing a crown of little red flowers. She cradles each healing herb to her lips, blessing them as Lyra watches on hazily, dropping them each fluttering into the pot.

It feels like her head goes into a deep, mesmerised trance. Pantalaimon, as a cricket, sits on Lyra's shoulder.

Serafina cuts open an alder sapling, draining its sap, before closing the root. A innocent hare, also drained of its lifeblood, revives under Serafina's magic and hops away with no memory of what happened. She fetches the pot's herbs, infusing them.

Will's chest rises, falls, and rises.

He doesn't move as another witch daubs the paste on the bleeding stumps of Will's fingers.

Lyra remains where she is, standing motionlessly a couple feet away. Serafina presses the sodden herbs onto Will's hand, tying it with a strip of her green silk-rag. The chanting begins again, louder and accompanied by soft, rhythmic claps.

A convulsion suddenly seizes Will, arching his neck, lifting his chest off the ground. His eyes still shut.

Serafina holds her palm to him, whispering in a strange, slow language that Lyra doesn't recognise. Will visibly relaxes. The witch trails her fingers over Will's sweat-drenched forehead, barely brushing him. It's so slow that Lyra's vision blurs to follow.

_"He's fading…"_

Will convulses again, harder, his injured hand flopping uselessly at his side.

Pantalaimon breaks free of his trance, forming into a red panda in the air and skittering over to Will's head. Lyra still cannot move. She doesn't know why, and wants it to _stop, stop, please stop,_ and the air feels so burdened with grief and fear.

"Will?" her daemon murmurs.

Lyra feels the instant Pantalaimon goes horrorstruck when Will's eyelids twitch open, revealing the whites of his eyes.

"Will," Lyra mumbles, finding her voice so small and strangled. Like a dying bird.

"Will…"

The air from Will's lungs strains, wheezing out of him.

_"Will!"_

"Take her," Serafina orders grimly.

The newest witch joining them quietly nods. She acts fast, encircling her arms to Lyra now screeching out Will's name. Lyra kicks her legs, hitting the witch's calves and ankles, and thrashes to be let go.

Pantalaimon cowers towards the ground, whining. But he refuses to back off.

The rest of the witches cluster around Will, obscuring Lyra's view, pressing their hands to his abdomen and ribs and sternum. They chant in the witch-language with all of their might. One by one, their hands retreat in disbelief. Serafina's mouth parts open.

Will's chest rise, falls, and halts.

Everything in this world goes as still as Will's vanished breath. Lyra and Pantalaimon and the witches can only hear the fire's crackle through the kindling and Lyra's own shrieks. Serafina nods heavyhearted to the witch protectively holding Lyra.

As soon as she's released, Lyra tears away with a gasp and scrambles for Will.

"Will!" Lyra shouts his name, fisting into Will's gray shirt and yanking for dear life. Tears stream down her reddening cheeks. "Will, come on!" Lyra shouts again, frantic and shrill. "Come on! You can't be dead! Will! We need to find your father! _Will!"_

Pantalaimon nudges to Lyra's knee, whining. His little red panda ears droop.

_"Will!"_

Lyra flattens her fingers against Will's chest. The only she can feel is her own heart pounding.

(Same as when she lost Roger.)

A blindingly hot pinprick of anger rises in Lyra.

_No…_

She gathers her hands together, fisting them and slamming them over Will's heart.

_No…!_

It's every ounce of strength left of her.

_NO…!_

Will lurches back to life, struggling for air and choking. He rolls over, spitting up a yellowish milky bile after a moment. Pantalaimon goes stunned. Will spits again, dragging his long, grey sleeve over his mouth and staring up in humiliation at Lyra.

"Lyra?… …"

He forces himself upright, staring around at the witches crowding and murmuring to each other as if dazed.

"Did… did it work…?" Will mutters.

He examines his silk-bandaged hand no longer throbbing. Will loses interest as soon as a furiously sobbing Lyra grabs his head with both hands, pulling their faces together. Their noses smush. Lyra's warm exhales gust over Will's mouth.

Relief kisses them all-over, nearly intoxicating.

*

Eventually, Serafina leads them out of the rocks and into a wild meadow bordering a stream. Lyra feels the dwarf rhododendrons grazing her with their dark, sleek leaves and the bundles of vermilion flowers once humming pleasantly with bees.

Nightfall goldens into dawn. It's not Cittàgazze, but it's _heartening_ compared to the darkness they left behind.

Will no longer appears pasty. He's exhausted, walking on with Lyra's arm round his middle. They find a nice patch of grass to sit in, further off from prying eyes. "How bad was it?" Will says the question as pragmatic as he can.

Lyra doesn't answer, but her ermine-shaped daemon croons woefully. Will does notice.

"I suppose I shouldn't ask…?"

"We thought we were going to lose you, Will," Pantalaimon murmurs. "It was scary." Lyra's eyes brighten with tears.

Will half-smiles down on him.

"I don't think I'm going anywhere. I feel better already, _and_ ," he promises, "I wouldn't go anywhere without you and Lyra. That would be ridiculous."

Pantalaimon chuckles, twitching his tail happily.

Lyra, hunched over with her legs up under her chin, listens for Will murmuring her name.

She gazes over to her shoulder, wiping off her cheek with her forearm before letting Will pull her over. The grass is high around them, bursting with cinquefoil and gentians and thin, blue cornflowers. Lyra's head rests comfortably against Will's chest, his heart thudding in Lyra's ear.

Steady and sure.

That's what Lyra wants.

*


End file.
